Grant Enfinger celebrates with his crew in victory lane after winning this year’s ARCA Mobile 200 at Mobile International Speedway. ARCA announced this week that the series will return to the speedway in 2014. Photo by Brandon Reed

The ARCA Racing Series presented by Menards will return to Mobile Int’l Speedway in Mobile, AL on March 22, 2014.

“It is my honor as a Mobile International Speedway driver and the defending ARCA Mobile 200 champion to announce that the ARCA Series is coming back to Mobile in 2014,” Enfinger said.

ARCA Week will begin on Saturday, March 15 with an open practice for ARCA teams and culminate with the third running of the ARCA Mobile 200 on Saturday, March 22.

“The combined efforts of everyone associated with the ARCA Mobile 200 have clearly created a winning formula for the ARCA Racing Series presented by Menards,” said ARCA President Ron Drager. “For the third consecutive year, we will bring the series directly from the season opener at Daytona in February to Mobile in March for the second race of the season. The ARCA Mobile 200 is now talked about all season long by the entire ARCA community-race teams, fans, media and officials. We’re pleased and proud our series has found a home on the Gulf Coast.”

Local Mobile drivers Enfinger and Cale Gale have provided story book endings to the first two ARCA Mobile 200s, winning in front of the home town fans. While the ARCA series has raced at over 200 different tracks since its inception in 1953, the 2014 ARCA Mobile 200 marks only the third appearance at Mobile International Speedway.

“The community has embraced the ARCA Series and the ARCA Mobile 200 has become much more than a race; it’s a happening,” said ARCA Mobile 200 promoter Tommy Praytor. “The Mobile Sports Authority, Mobile Convention & Visitors Bureau and Alabama’s Tourism Department all realize the importance of this race to Mobile and it takes everyone to make it happen.”

Opened in 1964, Mobile International Speedway is Alabama’s fastest half mile and is currently host to the Sunoco Southern Super Series and Miller Lite Super Late Model Series along with a regular schedule of Saturday night racing. Lee and Ida Fields purchased the Speedway in 1972 and for almost 40 years the duo produced “The Fastest Fun Around”. The track is currently being managed and promoted by Tim Bryant who is also the owner/promoter of Pensacola’s 5 Flags Speedway, the home of the Snowball Derby.

Mobile International Speedway is part of a long tradition of Alabama tracks ARCA has competed on. The ARCA Racing Series history in Alabama reaches back to 1961 when, on November 5, Ernie Derr won a 250-lap race at Birmingham. ARCA race events at the Fairgrounds in Montgomery in 1962, at Huntsville Speedway in 1963 and 1965, followed by a long tenure at Talladega Superspeedway (1969-present), have kept ARCA’s presence in Alabama alive over the decades.

The ARCA Racing Series presented by Menards has crowned an ARCA national champion each year since its inaugural season in 1953, and has toured over 200 race tracks in 26 states since its inception. The series has tested the abilities of drivers and race teams over the most diverse schedule of stock car racing events in the world, visiting tracks ranging from 0.375 mile to 2.66 miles in length, on both paved and dirt surfaces as well as a left- and right-turn road course in its most recent season.

Founded by John and Mildred Marcum in 1953 in Toledo, Ohio, the Automobile Racing Club of America (ARCA) is recognized among the leading sanctioning bodies in the country. In its seventh decade of competition having completed hundreds of thousands of miles of racing, ARCA administers over 100 race events each season in three professional touring series and local weekly events.